EXCERPT: There are No ‘Accidents’ We Have Been Fooled into Thinking There Are – Streetsblog New York

As the senior strategist and head writer of Transportation Alternatives, Jessie Singer helped move the phrase Crash, not accident from the activist world to the mainstream a crucial effort to make people see that all crashes can be prevented. In her deeply reported new book, There Are No Accidents: The Deadly Rise of Injury and Disaster Who Profits and Who Pays the Price (Simon & Schuster, Feb. 15, 2022), Singer surveys accidents arising from industries as diverse as energy, poultry, automobiles and pharmaceuticals to argue that the disasters weve come to accept as inevitable are, in fact, preventable and that they stem from a rapacious capitalism that has distorted our politics because it values profits over peoples lives. The following excerpt is from the climactic conclusion of Singers important book.

Around 170,000 people will die by accident next year. I can tell you thisbecause around 170,000 people died by accident last year, and not muchis going to change.

These numbers are a predictable minimum, but going forward, without action, we can expect that number to rise because 170,000 does not account for the accidental deaths to come as our planet becomes morefragile, our regulatory agencies less effective, and our built environmentmore automated. As the gig economy expands, fewer people will beprotected from the danger of their jobs, and more people will die inwork accidents. As the delivery economy expands, more Americansworkplaces will be the open road, and more people will die in trafficaccidents. As the corporate anti-regulatory agenda advances, the regulations that make accidents expensive for corporations will be rolledback, one by one, and accidents, from oil spills to post-hospital slip and-falls, will rise.

As global warming escalates, accidents will rise in surprising ways.

We will accidentally freeze to death in unheated homes in places thatnever used to have snow such as the 210 who died, most of hypothermia, when a snowstorm struck Texas in 2021. We will accidentally overheat in our apartments when the power goes out, which has beenhappening at an increasing rate as the world gets warmer the numberof power failures has risen 60 percent since 2015, and already, an estimated 12,000 a year die premature, heat-related deaths.

We will accidentally drown when the remnants of larger-than-ever storms strike ashard as the storms themselves such as the 43 who died in andaround New York City in 2021, many killed in flooded basement apartments when the lingering aftermath of a hurricane that made landfall as far away as Louisiana broke rainfall records all the way over on the East Coast. And climate emergencies will drive us to desperate migration, which too will lead to accidents, such as those killed crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in 2021 in April, 13 dead of the 25people crammed inside an SUV crossing into California, and in August,at least 10 killed of the 30 crammed inside a van crossing into Texas.

In all cases, blame will distract us in ways that sound new but harkback to the age-old patterns that this book traces through history. The food-app company will blame the delivery courier killed in a bike accident for breaking traffic laws, even though their job is impossible to dowithout breaking traffic laws. The developer will blame the constructionworker killed in a fall for breaking work rules about fall-arrest harnesses,even though they would be fired if they took the time to suit up. The drugcompany will blame the drug user killed by an overdose, even thoughnaloxone could have saved them, if only it were accessible in their state.

And a new era of accidents will dawn as more automakers testdriverless cars on public roads, more retailers replace employees with machines, and plane manufacturers build new automated systems into the act of flying. Well soon see deaths born not of human mistakes but of the inhuman nature of machines programmed to ignore human life.

Weve already gotten a taste of what this will look like in Amazonwarehouses, where automation arrived in the form of robots movingmerchandise to fulfill orders. With these robots came a rising accidental injury rate as high as 50 percent more than warehouses withoutautomation in part because Amazon used the robots as an excuse to speed up production. The company aimed to lower the accident rate in2018 by 20 percent; instead, the accident rate rose. In 2019, the companyaimed for 5 percent; the accident rate rose again. Amazon failed to meetits goals because while it kept aiming for accident rate reductions, italso kept raising the production quota for workers.

Of course, theseare just the injuries that we know of. A first-aid manager at a DuPont, Wash., Amazon warehouse where the rate of accidental injury was higher in 2019 than at any Amazon warehouse in the country, andfive times higher than the industry average reported that his bossesoffered workers under his care pizza parties if a shift was completedwith no accidents reported, so workers didnt report injuries, since theydidnt want to deprive their colleagues of a free meal.

While climate change and automation cause more accidents, I predictwe will hear less and less about the systems of accountability that CrystalEastman [Eastman was a lawyer and muckraking journalist whose 1910 report Work Accidents and the Law led to Americas first workers compensation law] and Ralph Nader fought for the laws and rules that createa cost for accidents. And if I am right, accidents will continue to rise.

As we die more by accident, I predict that we will also hear more abouthow protecting us from accidents is actually an infringement on our liberty. The trigger lock that protects a child from being accidentally shot isan infringement on Second Amendment rights. The regulatory agency isan oppression of the rights of the free market. The independent contractormay not have access to workers compensation, but they are free to work wherever they please. You are free to buy the largest SUV you wish, even when the hood blocks your view of the child playing in your driveway.

Without seismic change, this is our future.

Accidents happen in America, and happen here at outsize rates compared to our peer countries around the globe, because everything inAmerica is built with a mind toward profit and thrift, and on a foundation of white supremacy, a culture of punishment, and a myth ofself-reliance.

The solution is simple: Stop punishing mistakes and pretending that people are perfectible. Trade in the bootstraps parable for an acceptance that people need tools and resources to survive, and aninsistence that society should provide them. Apply a harm-reductionmodel to every corner of the built environment. Construct workplaces,roads, and homes, but also laws and policies, with a focus on reducing accident-related damage, cushioning the blow of everything, and protecting life, health, and dignity at any and all cost. Remember that the people who die most often by accident are often the most vulnerable the youngest and the oldest, the most discriminated against and leastwealthy and start there.

From There Are No Accidents: The Deadly Rise of Injury and Disaster Who Profits and Who Pays the Price (Simon & Schuster) by Jessie Singer. Click here for moreinformation.

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EXCERPT: There are No 'Accidents' We Have Been Fooled into Thinking There Are - Streetsblog New York